CTV platforms, streaming measurement vendors, and FAST channel operators sell into a buyer population that fits on a few thousand LinkedIn profiles – agency trading desk leads, brand-side programmatic managers, heads of advanced TV. Winston Francois builds paid social programs that target those job titles by name, time spend around the upfront and NewFronts calendar, and turn event attendees into sales meetings instead of chasing engagement metrics nobody in the deal room cares about.
The Problem
Your addressable audience is a few thousand people, and broad targeting can't find them
The people who actually move CTV ad budget – VP of Programmatic Investment, Director of Video Activation, Head of Advanced TV at a holding company trading desk – number in the low thousands globally. Meta and Instagram targeting runs on demographic and interest signals, not job title and employer, so a campaign built for that platform reaches consumers who watch a lot of streaming TV, not the people who buy streaming ad inventory for a living. Every dollar spent on broad reach in that environment is a dollar spent on someone who will never sign a media plan.
Budget attention is concentrated into a few weeks a year, and flat-spend campaigns miss the window
Media buyer attention on new CTV platforms spikes around IAB's Annual Leadership Meeting in January, the NewFronts pitch season in April and May, and the upfront negotiation window that follows immediately after. Outside those windows, the same buyer is heads-down executing plans that were already locked, not evaluating new vendors. A paid social program that spends the same amount every week of the year is underinvesting during the three or four weeks when buyers are actually forming a shortlist and overinvesting during the months when nobody is looking.
Paid social built like a SaaS funnel has nowhere for the click to go
A SaaS ad sends a click to a free trial signup with a clear self-serve conversion event. CTV ad inventory does not sell that way – the path runs through an RFP, a relationship with a trading desk planner, and a negotiation that takes months. Paid social campaigns copied from a demand-gen SaaS playbook, optimized for click-through rate and landing page conversion, generate traffic with no next step, because there is no checkout page waiting on the other end for a media buyer evaluating six-figure commitments.
Everyone in the category is bidding on the same feed during the same week
Measurement vendors, FAST channel operators, smart TV OEM ad platforms, and CTV demand-side tools all compete for the same handful of job titles on LinkedIn, and they all ramp spend during the same NewFronts and upfront windows because the calendar is public. Generic messaging about connected TV reach or cross-screen attribution blurs into the same feed as four other vendors a media buyer sees that week, and without sharp positioning tied to what actually differentiates the platform, the ad gets scrolled past as more category noise.
How We Help
We start by mapping the real buyer universe, not the vertical.
From there we build the calendar. CTV buyer attention is seasonal and public – IAB's Annual Leadership Meeting in January, NewFronts pitches in April and May, upfront negotiations immediately after – and we plan flight weight around those windows instead of spreading spend evenly across twelve months.
LinkedIn carries almost all of the working budget, because it is the only platform that lets us target by job title and named account at once.
Event and webinar retargeting is where paid social earns its keep outside the big flights.
Everything reports up through pipeline, not platform metrics. A click or an impression means nothing to a CTV sales team; a sales meeting booked with a named trading desk contact means everything.
What we deliver
- Buyer-title account map – the specific job titles and named accounts (trading desks, brand marketing orgs, agency holding companies) paid social targets, built from CRM and sales input
- Calendar-weighted flight plan – spend allocation built around IAB ALM, NewFronts, and upfront negotiation windows instead of flat year-round spend
- LinkedIn matched-audience and InMail program – campaigns built against the account list, not demographic or interest targeting
- Event and webinar retargeting sequences – warm audiences from NewFronts, IAB ALM, and webinar attendance moved toward a sales conversation
- Pipeline-tied reporting – spend and creative performance measured against meetings booked and account engagement, not clicks or impressions
A CTV company's paid social audience isn't a demographic, it's a named list of a few thousand job titles that gets pitched by every competitor in the category during the same three weeks a year. Winning that window is an account-targeting and timing problem, not a reach problem.
Our Methodology
We run this as a 90-day sprint, starting with a two-week audit of the current buyer list, existing paid social spend, and where it landed relative to the actual account targets. That audit almost always surfaces the same finding: real spend against real buyers is a small fraction of the total budget, with the rest going to reach that never converts.
Weeks three through six build the account map, the calendar-weighted flight plan, and the first round of LinkedIn creative and audience lists, timed to land before the next relevant industry window – IAB ALM, NewFronts, or upfront negotiations, whichever is closest on the calendar. We do not wait for a perfect creative system before launching; we launch against the account list with a working first version and refine from live performance data.
The remaining weeks run execution and measurement in parallel – flights go live against the calendar, retargeting sequences pick up event and webinar attendees, and the pipeline-tied reporting build tracks which accounts engaged and which moved to a sales conversation. This is different from a traditional agency retainer that reports impressions monthly and calls it done; we treat the campaign as unfinished until it is producing sales meetings with named accounts, and we adjust targeting and creative inside the sprint when it isn't.
How We Work
The first 30 days are the audit and account-map build – we pull the buyer title list, review existing spend, and set the calendar-weighted flight plan around the next relevant industry window. Days 30 to 60 are campaign build and launch: LinkedIn audiences, creative, InMail sequences, and the retargeting infrastructure for event and webinar attendees go live, coordinated with sales so the account list stays current as deals move.
On the client side, we need access to the CRM account list, sales input on which accounts matter most, and a fast creative approval loop – paid social windows around NewFronts and upfronts are short, and campaigns that wait two weeks for sign-off miss the buyer attention they were built for. On our side, a dedicated paid social lead runs the LinkedIn program day to day, backed by the creative team for ad units and the measurement build for pipeline reporting.
Cadence is weekly during flight windows – spend, audience performance, and account engagement reviewed against the calendar – and monthly the rest of the year, focused on maintaining presence with the account list rather than chasing volume. Every review ties back to accounts that engaged and meetings booked, not platform-reported clicks.
Initial engagements run three to six months, long enough to cover at least one full industry cycle – an IAB ALM or NewFronts window plus the upfront negotiation period that follows – so we can show whether the calendar-weighted approach actually moved accounts through the pipeline. Most clients extend into an ongoing retainer once the account-targeting infrastructure is built, since the same audience lists and calendar logic carry forward year over year with refinement rather than a rebuild.
- Pipeline-qualified sales meetings from named accounts
- Cost per qualified meeting reduction versus broad-reach spend
- Share of voice with target accounts during NewFronts and upfront windows
- Event and webinar attendee conversion into sales conversations
- Sales cycle acceleration on paid-social-sourced accounts
If your ctv / connected tv company needs paid social leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does a paid social engagement cost for a CTV company?
Most CTV paid social engagements run in the mid five figures to low six figures per quarter, driven mostly by the size of the account list and how many industry windows (NewFronts, IAB ALM, upfronts) fall inside the engagement period. That is typically less than a single senior in-house hire once you account for benefits and management overhead, and it comes with LinkedIn media spend budgeted separately based on account list size.
How long before we see results from paid social for a CTV company?
The first meaningful signal is account engagement – named accounts opening InMail, engaging with sponsored content, attending a retargeted webinar – which typically shows up within the first four to six weeks of a live flight. Sales meetings booked from that engagement usually follow within 60 to 90 days, though the exact timing depends on where the flight lands relative to the upfront and NewFronts calendar.
How does the paid social team integrate with our existing sales and marketing staff?
We work directly off the CRM account list your sales team already owns, so the paid social program stays aligned with which accounts are actually in active conversations versus cold. Sales gets visibility into which accounts engaged with paid social before a first call, which changes how that call gets opened.
What makes Winston Francois different from a traditional paid social agency?
A traditional paid social agency optimizes for platform metrics – click-through rate, cost per click, engagement rate – because that is what most of their clients sell against. We build the program around the CTV sales cycle instead: named accounts, a calendar tied to real industry moments, and reporting that ties spend to meetings booked.
How do you measure ROI from a paid social engagement for a CTV company?
ROI gets measured against pipeline, not platform dashboards – which named accounts engaged, how many of those accounts converted into a sales meeting, and how that compares to the cost of reaching them through broad targeting. We track cost per qualified meeting and share of voice with the target account list during the key industry windows, both of which map directly to what a CTV sales team actually needs to close deals.
What type of CTV company is the right fit for paid social with Winston Francois?
This fits CTV ad platforms, streaming measurement vendors, FAST channel operators, and smart TV OEM ad businesses at Series A through growth stage with a defined list of target accounts – even an informal one – and a sales team that can turn engaged accounts into conversations. It is a weaker fit for a company that has not yet identified who its buyer actually is, since the whole model depends on targeting a named list rather than a broad audience.
